I too have to admit that I love Blake. He's totally a Marry. His writing may have been dense and possibly indicating bat-shit-craziness, but his illustrations, particularly the illuminated prints, indicate he was visionary in the truest sense.

Also, his take on divinity, that the true Divinity would never be punitive and malicious (so unlike Dante), is the most sensical of all of them.

And, finally, he's also a Marry because when his wife couldn't conceive and the other Swedenborgians suggested they get a surrogate or concubine as would be acceptable in Swedenborgian rules, he didn't because his wife didn't want him to.

And, he taught her to read and become an illustrator too.

Blake's a keeper.

to me, Dante is always a chucker.

For the record, Blake was happily married and had lots of lusty sex with his wife.

eta: oops, Kat already updated that record with Blake's M-ness.

And, with that list, there are plenty of problems (Dante was a bitter exile, Milton's blindness) that might be deciding factors.

I feel so ignorant, even from just skimming in this thread.

[Edit: both in popular culture and in the more traditional classic one. The most I can get to is guess which name belongs to which period. I hope.]

Blake and Dante are both keepers for me. But then, I am a Purgatorio and Paradisio-preferring freak, so what do I know.

F/C/M Blake, Dante, Donne--that'd be almost undoable for me; on balance with both Blake and Donne, I could barely, just barely, chuck Dante, but deciding between the other two would be agony. And replace Dante with either of the Brownings, and I'd be completely immobilized.

Young John Dunne.

Older John Dunne.

Sigh. Wild-living crazy young poet, all about the God and the sex and the ecstatic intertwining of all the pleasures. He's like the proto-Prince.

I feel so ignorant, even from just skimming in this thread.

Oh, hush, you, higher-math-loving Physics Girl.

I'd have to go F Donne and M Blake in JZ incredibly painfully difficult scenario -- if only because of Blake's yummy sex-ay marital history above, and the fact that Donne's crazy ecstatic thing peaked early. I'd be all "honey, whatever happened to the astoundingly dirty sonnets? all your astoundingly dirty sonnets are about God, anymore" and that's just no good for a marriage. Still, it wasn't an easy choice.

"honey, whatever happened to the astoundingly dirty sonnets? all your astoundingly dirty sonnets are about God, anymore"

So he's like Prince? Finally, something in this conversation to which I can draw a parallel.

Exactly.

I'd be all "honey, whatever happened to the astoundingly dirty sonnets? all your astoundingly dirty sonnets are about God, anymore" and that's just no good for a marriage.

Although, dude, if you were Donne's wife, he'd have gone to prison for you. How hot is that? He secretly married his boss's daughter and spent some weeks in Fleet Prison for it; when neither he nor she would renounce the marriage, he was released. They spent the next few years poor and semi-desperate (in addition to being a poet and a sailor, he was a lawyer, though not a prosperous one), and her father didn't deign to acknowledge her again until eight years later.

They also apparently had lots and lots of Teh Sex, poor things--she had twelve children in sixteen years and died in childbirth. But he was totally smitten with her, suffered for her and worked like a dog for her, and turned to God after she died because he didn't see much point to worldly pleasures if she wasn't around to share them with him.

So that's the basics of Donne. If you could just throw in some good reliable birth control, you'd have one hell of an M.

I'm with amych-- F Donne, M Blake, C Dante. Although Donne's God Sonnets were still pretty sexy, Blake seems a more steady match.